Propagandhi

This song was inspired by the real-life sto­ry of Bel­la Gah­los. We met her in 1997 at an East Tim­or Alert Net­work ben­e­fit in Win­nipeg. We are hum­bled to have crossed paths with her. This is her story:

Bel­la Gah­los is one of three East Tim­o­rese who have defect­ed to Cana­da. She was only three years old when Indone­sia invad­ed her coun­try. Her two young broth­ers were beat­en to death and her father was thrown into jail when the Indone­sian mil­i­tary entered her home in Jan­u­ary 1976. After the Dili mas­sacre, her old­er broth­er was jailed and bru­tal­ly tor­tured for hav­ing made a ​“Free East Tim­or” T‑shirt worn by some of the demonstrators.

Although she focused on her per­son­al expe­ri­ence as a young sur­vivor of the Indone­sian occu­pa­tion, Bel­la also addressed U.S. com­plic­i­ty in the inva­sion and occu­pa­tion of East Tim­or and the Unit­ed States government’s con­tin­u­ing mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic sup­port for the bru­tal Suhar­to régime.

In her talks, Bel­la often recount­ed her expe­ri­ence with Indonesia’s forced ster­il­iza­tion of Tim­o­rese women and girls. She was only thir­teen years old when the mil­i­tary came to her school and asked all the young women to line up after forc­ing the boys to leave the room.

“They told us we need­ed to be inject­ed to stay healthy,” she explained. ​“I was fright­ened; I didn’t trust them. Five of them had to hold me down, and they had a very hard time. Then they came to my home the same week and inject­ed me again.”

Much lat­er, with the help of Bish­op Belo, she dis­cov­ered that she and her class­mates had been inject­ed with Depo-Provera (a birth con­trol drug).

Bel­la also spoke of liv­ing under a con­stant fear of being raped: ​“Women in East Tim­or are raped all the time by the mil­i­tary. They just come into your home and force you.”

Bel­la began to work with the under­ground resis­tance in 1989, help­ing to plan demon­stra­tions and con­vinc­ing oth­er women to take an active role in the move­ment. In 1991, Bel­la helped to orga­nize the peace­ful march to the San­ta Cruz ceme­tery in Dili. When the Indone­sian mil­i­tary opened fire on the demon­stra­tion, Bel­la man­aged to get her­self and her preg­nant aunt over the high ceme­tery walls to safe­ty. More than 250 of her friends were not so lucky, being bru­tal­ly killed in the massacre.

In the after­math of the mas­sacre Bel­la joined the Indone­sian mil­i­tary youth corps to mask her involve­ment in the demon­stra­tion. For three years the Indone­sian author­i­ties trained her to fight against her own peo­ple. Dur­ing this time, Bel­la secret­ly used her army salary to help the resis­tance movement.

In 1994, after months of inter­ro­ga­tion and instruc­tion, the Indone­sian gov­ern­ment select­ed Bel­la to rep­re­sent East Tim­o­rese youth in the Cana­da World Youth pro­gram. She was well trained to speak to the Cana­di­an media and to por­tray Suharto’s pro­pa­gan­da machine’s ver­sion of a ​“typ­i­cal” young Tim­o­rese — edu­cat­ed, suc­cess­ful, and pro-integration.

Bel­la defect­ed after her arrival in Cana­da with the help of her uncle, Con­stân­cio Pin­to, who had escaped East Tim­or short­ly after the Dili mas­sacre. Since then, Bel­la has been per­fect­ing her Eng­lish and tour­ing Cana­da to speak for her country’s free­dom. To learn more or to join her strug­gle, vis­it the East Tim­or Alert Net­work.